Harlem9 to Return in Person for 11th Annual 48HOURS IN...HARLEM FESTIVAL This Month

Harlem9, the producing collective responsible for the OBIE Award-Winning "48Hours in...™Harlem", "48Hours in...™El Bronx", "48Hours in...™Detroit", "48Hours in...™Dallas," and "48Hours in...™Holy Ground", is back in person in Harlem after three years away. The last in-person Harlem festival, took place in 2019 at The National Dance Institute, where the 11th Annual Festival will be held. The collective celebrated their 10th Anniversary with a digital festival in 2020, and forged a partnership with Harlem Stage and the Lortel Foundation for Consequences in 2021

In 2019, the OBIE Award-Winning collective, succeeded in gaining a national audience when they produced "48Hours in...™El Bronx" with Pregones / PRTT, "48Hours in...™Detroit" with Detroit Public Theatre, "48Hours in...™Dallas" with Shades of Brown Theatre, and "48Hours in...™Holy Ground" in Winston-Salem at The National Black Theatre Festival in partnership with NC Black Rep.

Harlem9 is a collaborative partnership between 6 producers, bringing together 6 playwrights, 6 directors, and 18 actors. Like the most recent and second in-person iteration of the festival in Detroit, this past March, all the festivals are "inspired" events. The 11th Annual Harlem edition asks playwrights to create visionary writings through the lens of Afro-futuristic texts taken from plays, poems, short stories and musical works. In just 48 hours, the 6 playwrights, 6 directors, and 18 actors will be challenged to create ten-minute plays, inspired by the work of Octavia E. Butler, Keisha Thompson, Nic Stone, Nnedi Okorafor, Sun Ra, and Rachael Young.

A whirlwind weekend of play creation with emerging and established artists will culminate with two live performances on Sunday, August 21, 2022 at 7 PM and 9:30 PM. Participating artists' details are below. Tickets are available on Brown Paper Tickets. To purchase for $25 in advance online. A limited number of tickets will also be available at the door for $30, cash only. The National Dance Institute Center for Learning & the Arts is located at 217 W. 147th Street between Frederick Douglass Blvd and Adam Clayton Powell Jr, Blvd.

The 6 playwrights are Gethsemane Herron, Maia Matsushita, Azure Osborne-Lee, Eureka Lewis, Reynaldo Piniella, and travis tate. The 6 directors are Daniel Carlton, Christina Franklin, Jeffrey Miller, Ibi Owolabi, Heather Alicia Simms and Benja Kay Thomas The 18 actors include: Alana Bowers, Nii Adu Clerk, David Cork, Sinclair Daniel, Ashton Harris, Nicole Hunt, Dharon Jones, Jessica Lark, Essence Lotus, Maegan Murphy, Sean Phillips, Kala Ross, Jarvis Tomdio, Gayle Turner, and Kelah Windfield.

Since 2011, Harlem9 has commissioned playwrights of color to tell their stories in the annual "48Hours in...™Harlem" play festival. For over a decade, the producers have continued to highlight and uplift writers, directors, and actors at various points in their careers, including Jocelyn Bioh (School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play, Nollywood Dreams, Russian Doll), Brandon Michael Hall (The Mayor, God Friended Me), Dominique Morisseau (Ain't Too Proud-The Life and Times of the Temptations, Skeleton Crew ), Tonye Patano (Weeds), Tonya Pinkins (Madam Secretary, Gotham), Aurin Squire (Good Fight, Evil) and Marcel Spears (The Neighborhood, FAT HAM).

ABOUT HARLEM9

Harlem9 is a collaborative producing organization composed of a group of Black theater professionals from various backgrounds whose mission is to produce together, exploring the past, present, and future of black culture, celebrating its rich and diverse history of storytelling. Bryan E. Glover, Garlia Cornelia Jones, Eric Lockley, Jonathan McCrory, and Liberation Theatre Company (Sandra A. Daley-Sharif and Spencer Scott Barros) are the producers that comprise Harlem9. For more information, please visit https://bit.ly/48hours22bpt.

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